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Saturday, December 19, 2020

CONTEXT: Alien Hunters Discover Mysterious Signal from Proxima Centauri

As usual, Scientific Enquirer goes for clicks over accuracy. “[F]rom Proxima Centauri” overstates the precision: a single radio telescope, and the Parkes dish in particular, is sensitive to “side lobes” coming from directions other than where the telescope is aimed. This makes them vulnerable to picking up signals from terrestrial sources or those in Earth or solar orbit, and any SETI candidate signal requires confirmation by at least two independent observatories in different locations. That hasn't happened here, nor has the narrowband, unmodulated signal repeated.

Posted at December 19, 2020 12:57